The British Threat: By
Hardening its Position on Nuclear Weapons, Labour is Encouraging
Proliferation by George Monbiotwww.dissidentvoice.org
March 30, 2004

The
paradox of modern warfare works like this: by enhancing our military
strength, we enhance our opponents' capacity to destroy us. The Russian
state developed thermobaric bombs (which release a cloud of explosive
material into the air) for use against Muslim guerillas. Now, according to
New Scientist, Muslim terrorists are trying to copy them. [1]
The United States has been producing weaponized anthrax, ostensibly to
anticipate terrorist threats. In 2001, anthrax stolen from this programme
was used to terrorize America. The greatest horrors with which terrorists
might threaten us are those whose development we funded.

Given that the most
frightening of these technologies is nuclear weaponry, and given that the
possibility that terrorists might acquire them becomes more real as the list
of nuclear powers lengthens, we should be grateful to Tony Blair for
encouraging disarmament in Libya. Though Libya's programme was less advanced
than we were led to believe (its "4000 uranium centrifuges" turned out to be
merely centrifuge casings) [2], and though Blair's
enthusiasm was doubtless sharpened by the opportunities Libya offers to
British corporations, we should not permit our reasonable cynicism to
obscure the fact that, for just the second time in history, a state has
voluntarily renounced its nuclear technologies. Libya, unlike India,
Pakistan, Israel, North Korea or Iran, is now abiding by the terms of the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

But amid all the
backslapping last week, something was forgotten. This is that the treaty
which Gaddafi has honoured was a two-way deal. Those states which did not
possess nuclear weapons would not seek to acquire them. In return, the
states which already possessed them - the US, Russia, China, France and the
United Kingdom - would "pursue negotiations in good faith ... on general and
complete disarmament". [3] Libya is now in conformity with
international law. The United Kingdom is not.

At the end of next month,
British officials will be travelling to New York for a meeting about the
five-yearly review of the treaty. It is hard to see what their negotiating
position will be. For they have precious little evidence of "good faith" to
show.

It is true that, since the
end of the Cold War, the United Kingdom's total nuclear explosive power has
been reduced by 70 per cent. But that appears to be as low as the government
will ever permit it to go. The defence white paper, published in December,
notes that "Decisions on whether to replace Trident are not needed this
Parliament but are likely to be required in the next one. We will therefore
... ensure that the range of options for maintaining a nuclear deterrent
capability is kept open." [4] Trident stays until it
reaches the end of its natural life, whatever the rest of the world may
offer. And then? Nothing this government has said or done suggests that it
would consider decommissioning those warheads without replacing them.

To this sin of omission we
must add three of commission. The first is the UK's support for the US
nuclear missile defence programme, which could scarcely be better calculated
to provoke a new arms race. This month the Fylingdales radar station in
North Yorkshire is being upgraded to accommodate it.

The second is that the
government has laid out pounds2 billion to equip the Atomic Weapons
Establishment at Aldermaston with the means to design and build a new
generation of tactical nuclear weapons. [5] In this
respect, as in all others, we appear to be keeping the US company. Earlier
this month, the US National Nuclear Security Administration released its
budget documents for research into the "robust nuclear earth penetrator", a
first-strike bunker-busting bomb which, if developed, would blow the
non-proliferation treaty to kingdom come. The US government had claimed that
all it wanted to do was to conduct a feasibility study. But, the new
documents show, it has now budgeted to design, test and start producing it
by 2009. [6]

The third is that our
policy on the deployment of nuclear weapons has changed. In March 2002, for
the first time in British history, the government suggested that we might
use them before they are used against us. [7] Since then,
Geoff Hoon, the defence secretary, has repeated the threat several times, on
each occasion further reducing the threshold. Put items two and three
together and the United Kingdom begins to look like a pretty dangerous
state.

So how does the government
reconcile all this with its commitment to the treaty? By reinterpreting it.
In October last year, Geoff Hoon told the House of Commons that "Under the
terms of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, the United Kingdom, the
United States, France, China and Russia are legally entitled to possess
nuclear weapons." [8]

The treaty says nothing of
the kind. It's a short and simple document, which anyone but Geoff Hoon can
understand, and it says just two things about the nuclear weapons possessed
by the five major powers: they mustn't be transferred to non-nuclear states,
and they must be dismantled. [9]

Fifteen years ago, amid
massive controversy, Labour abandoned its commitment to unilateral nuclear
disarmament. Now Hoon's rewriting of the non-proliferation treaty suggests
that it is quietly abandoning its commitment to multilateral disarmament.

Or we could put it another
way: that the Labour party has rediscovered its enthusiasm for
unilateralism, as long as it's someone else who is doing the disarming. As
Jeremy Corbyn pointed out in a Commons debate last week, the government's
"non-proliferation unit" has recently changed its name to the "proliferation
prevention unit", to reflect the new policy of reverse unilateral
disarmament. [10]

How all this plays with the
new nuclear powers is not hard to imagine. If a nation like Britain, whose
prime minister poses as a broker of peace and disarmament, has abandoned the
non-proliferation treaty, is installing the capacity to build a new
generation of nuclear weapons, has asserted the right to strike pre-emptively
and is beginning, in short, to look like a large and well-armed rogue state,
then what possible incentive do other nations have to abandon their weapons?

Indeed, the lesson the
weaker states will draw from the conduct of the major powers over the past
year is that they should acquire as many nuclear weapons as they can. If you
don't possess them, you can expect to be invaded. If you do, you can expect
to be left in peace or (if you have oil) courted and bribed. And if you get
rid of them, you would be an idiot to expect the big nuclear states to
reciprocate.

Power, the new British
doctrine appears to assert, grows out of the payload of a bomb. This may
once have been true, when our enemies were states which had everything to
lose by starting a nuclear war. But when your enemies are suicide bombers,
and when they have no direct connection to a nation state, mutually assured
destruction ceases to be a useful threat. Your intransigence merely
encourages proliferation elsewhere, and so enhances the possibility that
nuclear material will fall into the hands of terrorists. The more we assert
our strength, the more vulnerable we become.

George Monbiot is
Honorary Professor at the Department of Politics in Keele and Visiting
Professor at the Department of Environmental Science at the University of
East London. He writes a weekly column for
The Guardian newspaper of London. His recently released book, The Age
of Consent (Flamingo Press, 2003), puts forth proposals for global
democratic governance. His articles and contact info can be found at his
website:
www.monbiot.com.